Monday, August 14, 2017

Last week passed us by in a flurry of business as we hurdle towards the end of our term & thus the end of our 16/17 school year. As books & subjects are wrapped up & laid aside I confess I find myself a little emotional to realise I can count on one hand the years I have left with these boys of mine. It tends to hit you at the most unsuspecting moments, all though tripping over planners & discarded school supplies tends to bring me back to the hear & now.

We made a change in math curriculum last week, not something I was expecting at all. For the past 6 years we’ve used MUS & enjoyed getting Mr Demme every Monday {or in some cases Sunday} as he explained a variety of new topics to us. With our eldest working independently he was running into some snags with MUS & it was causing some frazzled, & admittedly late, evenings as he had to wait on Mr S to get in from work. I was being dragged to the white board to solve the math debates, & friends math is not my strong subject! Mr S came in a few weekends ago, sat down with an exasperated sigh & said, “Maybe I just can’t teach this math stuff.”

I wasn't very kind as I broke out in hysterical laughter, once I composed myself I suggested he look at other math curriculum & named a few. He was vaguely familiar with Teaching Textbooks due to the fact that we used them before jumping into MUS. Within a week we had 2 shiny new math programmes, which oddly enough are still, gracing the learning table. The upside to this change is that Teaching Textbooks offers hints & problem solvers. Problem Solvers mean that if you get the problem wrong on all tries they will walk you through it step by step to show you how you should have, or could have, done the problem to get the correct answer. Rather then making the same mistake through an entire lesson you can then take notes & move on to conquer the rest of your day.
We’ll see how it goes over the remainder of this term & into next year.

I won’t say both boys were jumping up & down with joy. Morgan found some of the TT methods silly when the lecturer was doing demos because it was so different to what he was taught & has practiced over the past 6 years. I had to remind him that there are various ways to get the work done as we proved at the “Great White Board Debate of Last Week..” Jayden, on the other hand, would likely only jump for joy over math if he was told he never had to do another lesson.

Morgan aced his Quiz for Module 15 & pushed forward into that final Module about Astrophysics. He & Mr S indulged in some long discussions over the weekend about the various material covered & whole bunch of other things I managed to block out while attempting to steam a pot of broccoli & keep it from going all mushy while they took forever to clear up the table so we could have our dinner. More seriously, I am delighted that despite my own dislike for science that my son has his own confidence & a father who is more than happy to feed it.

Jayden officially wrapped up his first science book in his HOD programme. He was very very excited about that. Not because he doesn’t like science, he’s so-so on the subject where it greatly depends on the topic being covered. It was more that he was ready to move on past space & into a new area. We indulged in watching the old Apollo 13 film with him this weekend, which opened up a world of discussion especially as the nation was called to pray for the stranded astronauts in the 1960's where as today the nation would be filled with outrage & contempt over the mere notion.

Jayden tackled Unit 13 in his HOD programme this week where we finished reading about John Wycliff in The Morning Start Of The Reformation. There was much mapping that took place as well covering The Black Plague, England In The 12th Century, & Scone Scotland. We covered William Wallace, which reminded us of one of the beautiful audio productions done by Heirloom Audio, In Freedom’s Cause. We also read about The Hundred Year War as we approach the end of the middle ages.

Morgan polished off his final literature book, & has reached the final chapter of his history which he’ll polish off next week. He had a few chuckles as he found himself disagreeing with the opinion of the author. Funny how the author, while listing fact can easily weave in opinion as well, isn’t it? I’ve really enjoyed hearing his own opinions on situations like that & his take on the information covered in the history books he’s used this year. It’s certainly given him his own viewpoint on many current events unfolding around us.

No major outings for us this week but Nana’s birthday was on Thursday & the boys helped make all the fixings for chicken wraps & a simple chocolate cake to take down to celebrate. We also enjoyed a few trips to the beach this week, all though we were nearly blown away with the crazy arctic winds that hit us. I joke not, we had to chase down our roast chicken that was blown off our table for our picnic lunch on Saturday!

We did, however, also taclke another week of writing in our IEW curriculum & grammar with Fix-It. We wrapped up our reading in the book of Acts, finished our read aloud of Wonder & spent many hours debating exactly who's turn it was to pick the next one & what book they should pick.